For several months now Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has appeared to be a serious candidate for the nation’s highest office. But by Sunday morning, in a dramatic change of tone, Mr. Cain, a former restaurant executive, announced that he was “only kidding“ about his run for the presidency and seemed perplexed that millions of Americans were taking him and his campaign seriously.

Philip Maddocks

Editor's note: This is a work of satire.

For several months now Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has appeared to be a serious candidate for the nation’s highest office. But by Sunday morning, in a dramatic change of tone, Mr. Cain, a former restaurant executive, announced that he was “only kidding“ about his run for the presidency and seemed perplexed that millions of Americans were taking him and his campaign seriously.

“This is a joke,” Mr. Cain told the journalist David Gregory during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he was asked about his run for president. “This is not a serious plan. I’ve also said — and there is no greater evidence of this than my current standing in the polls — that America needs to get a sense of humor.”

Mr. Cain’s attempt to pass off his run for president as nothing but a joke may take more effort, however. In making the initial push for his flat tax plan calling for a 9 percent income tax, 9 percent corporate tax and a 9 percent sales tax, Mr. Cain was detailed and repetitive. He did not introduce his thoughts as anything but serious commentary, beginning with the words, “We have a crisis.”

And the crowds responded with cheers, not laughs.

Even during a recent barnstorming bus tour across the south, when a desperate Mr. Cain tried to undercut his meteoric rise to front-runner status in the GOP presidential primary by introducing the idea of building an electrified fence on the country’s border with Mexico that could kill people trying to enter the USA illegally, he drew only loud cheers and little laughter from crowds of several hundred people at the rallies.

At the second stop, just south of Louisville, Ky., an indefatigable Mr. Cain, standing atop his campaign bus with the signature flat tires, tried to get the nation laughing again by announcing that he also would consider using military troops “with real guns and real bullets” to police the borders.

But his stepped-up humorous rhetoric did little to stanch the seriousness of Mr. Cain’s candidacy in the eyes of voters.

During his interview with Mr. Gregory, Mr. Cain also found himself on the defensive while trying to make light of a Washington Post story that made what Mr. Cain described as “an unconscionably serious attempt” to dissect his flat tax proposal, which the newspaper report concluded would hurt many poor and middle-class families.

“Only if they don’t laugh,” Mr. Cain retorted. “You can’t believe everything you read and you certainly can’t believe everything I say. Do you think I do? Right. Then why would you?”

Mr. Cain also dismissed a Wall Street Journal editorial critique that a 9 percent rate when combined with state and local levies would mean a tax on goods of 17 percent or more in many places.

“Have we become a country where everything that is said is to be taken literally?” Mr. Cain said. “I worry about the future of humor and the future of our children growing up in a nation that takes itself and its former pizza executives so seriously. There is an art to living that these numbers crunchers are failing to grasp.”

Mr. Cain said he remained at a loss to explain how his 9-9-9 tax plan has gained so much traction with the public even though it is little more than a sketch of what would be a radical and complex overhaul of the tax system and was hatched with help from an investment adviser at a Wells Fargo in Ohio who has never worked for a policy research group or an academic institution.

“Huntsman seemed to get it when he made what I thought was a pretty good joke, saying the 9-9-9 tax plan sounded more like the price of a pizza,” Mr. Cain said, referring to a remark made by GOP rival Jon M. Huntsman. “But no one wants to hear what Huntsman has to say, even when he is right.”

Mr. Cain’s effort to distance himself from the solemnity of his rivals’ campaigns appeared to suffer another setback on Thursday when candidate Rick Perry said his declaration about studying more and getting more sleep in order to improve his debate performances was made in jest and was part of the Texas governor’s plan to scrap his original campaign in favor of one “that is so simpleminded that even Timothy Geithner will laugh.”